Ask HN: How to detect Google Play review completion via API?

1 points by orangepush 9 hours ago

Hi all,

We’ve hit a limitation with the Google Play Developer API during automation and wondered if anyone has found a workaround.

Short background: Using the Google Play Developer API, we can upload artifacts and move releases between tracks (internal/alpha/beta/production). However, once a release is submitted for review, there’s no API to read the review status (e.g., “in review,” “approved,” “rejected”), and you cannot remotely trigger the final publish after review completes.

Reference issue: https://issuetracker.google.com/issues/179708468

This is blocking our end-to-end automation: we can push builds and submit for review, but we can’t reliably detect when review finishes or automatically finalize the rollout.

Questions for the community:

Has anyone found a direct API (official or undocumented) that provides review status?

Any reliable workarounds? (examples: polling track/release timestamps, scraping Play Console UI, email/webhook notifications, or manual gates)

If you had to design a robust release pipeline around this limitation, what approach did you take?

Thanks — any pointers, scripts, or experiences would be hugely helpful!